The present invention relates to a dilution apparatus, a process monitoring apparatus, a method of diluting a fluidic sample, and a software program or product.
For various applications, for instance in analytical chemistry, it is necessary to experimentally investigate a fluidic sample. However, it may happen that a detector has only a limited range of intensities within which it can deliver meaningful output results. If a fluidic sample is highly concentrated exceeding the requirements of a detector, an overflow of the detector may occur so that the output result of the detector is not usable. For this and other purposes, it may be required to dilute a fluidic sample, for instance to reduce its concentration to a value which can be handled by a detector.
However, in order to be able to interpret a detector signal correctly, it may be further desired to know which dilution ratio has been applied to the fluidic sample, i.e. which amount of a fluidic sample (in terms of volume or mass) corresponds to which amount of diluting fluid (in terms of volume or mass) with which the fluidic sample has been mixed for dilution. Diluting fluid is a fluid used for diluting the fluidic sample, i.e. being particularly free of components of the fluidic sample generating a detector signal or, more generally, being the fluid under analysis.
Conventionally, fluid dilution may be performed as disclosed by WO 1999/45364, WO 2009/111229, JP 2011-13045, WO 2010/099005, U.S. Pat. No. 4,244,919, or WO 2011/106162.
It is still difficult to dilute a fluidic sample by diluting fluid with a dilution rate being precisely definable over a broad range and being simple in operation.